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Welcome to After Silence - A message board and chat room for rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse survivors.

Welcome to After Silence, a message board and chat room designed to help survivors communicate in the recovery of rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, and all types of sexual violence.

After Silence has over 30 different forums, ranging from topics created to discuss specific areas of healing and recovery from rape and sexual violence, as well as forums open to general discussions and lighter topics. Because we value the privacy of our members, most of our forums are private, which means that ONLY REGISTERED members have access to them. Please register for a free account to gain full access to the After Silence Online Support Group.

I finally decided to come here to ask this question because there are so many people here somebody has to understand.

I'm PTSD. I'm hypervigilant and have flashbacks. But I don't avoid reminders I seek them hard, in art in news places people...

I kept coming back over and over to the place I was molested. I look at pictures of myself at that age and look in vain for pictures of the babysitter who abused me. I stay up all night reading about kids getting hurt. I can't stop talking about it; I'm never done. Its like the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

I guess I feel the world doesn't believe me or thinks it doesn't matter. Not even really the people, just the world the audience, God or something. God thinks I'm a whiner and should get over it. So I can never let myself forget or like it won't even be true anymore and I'll just be broken for no reason.

How do I make God listen. How do I make my dad listen? How do I give up on making my dad listen? When will I feel done? When is this going to stop being the most topical thing in the world, the most important thing to be thinking about no matter what?

I totally understand what you are saying. I'm glad that you shared this with us. AS is amazing in that there are so many people - someone is bound to understand.

I used to be like this all of the time. I still am sometimes, but much less often. I wanted to feel less alone. I wanted to know that I was 'normal', despite these very abnormal experiences. I wanted to grab any random stranger on the street and tell them all of it - the truth that I'd been hiding.

The memories, thoughts, and emotions run so strong and deep. Imagine a beach ball that you are holding underwater. It takes a lot of energy to keep that ball held down. But it will eventually resurface. This is just your way of expending the energy of holding it down. It may also be your way of trying to resist the denial of what happened.

I tried many ways of dealing with this - healthy and unhealthy ways. Finally I decided that I needed to go to a therapist and talk through things. It has been the best decision. Difficult but worth it. I couldn't hold down the ball anymore, I had been down the unhealthy paths and wasn't willing to go there again.

Just my two-cents, for what it's worth. Welcome to AS. safe hugs, if ok.Jane

I have found myself seeking out triggers as well. Many things that trigger me, I have no choice but to face to live a normal life. I seek them out and face them to make my triggers less triggering for me. It has helped a lot. I am now not easily triggered at all.

The past couple years I had wanted to read my mom and grandma's journal they kept from when stuff was happening and I had finally mentioned. And a home video my dad left here when I had been seeing him. I guess I wanted to see if there was anything I didn't remember or if the things I did know matched up. The one thing I still can't bring myself to do is watch the movie Annie.

But for the past year or so I've been avoiding matters more or less not wanting anything to do with it. Then things started coming back without warning and my friends are worried and I just want it to be over. So I'm working to the point of facing my fears and flashbacks and nightmares and hopefully getting over them.

to JaneSays: I have a therapist and we get useful stuff done, but telling him stuff doesn't feel like telling. He's so professional; there's no emotional response. I don't know the emotional response I want, but like... the guy is just doing his job. He'd have to listen no matter what it was saying. It doesn't make me feel like what I'm saying matters, when there are so many others who have ignored me or failed to understand.

I've done this and it comes in waves. I get completely engrossed in watching stories about csa and r* victims. I'll watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit knowing that I'll be triggered. I'll sit and obsess in thoughts of the csa...in the extreme details of every aspect from remembering the feel of the sheets to the feel of the clothes hamper in the bathroom. I'll take a bath and stare at the bathroom imagining occurances in the past in detail.

I have highs and lows and it will usually happen when I'm starting to dip towards depression.

Thank you for sharing this... lol ...I wasn't aware that there were other people who did this. I guess it's all part of the healing proces.

Calliehere: Yes that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Why do you think we do that? It doesn't feel unhealthy to me, it feels necessary. But I don't know what it accomplishes.

Do you think its because people didn't listen to or believe me. Am I trying to prove its real? You don't have to answer but I'm curious whether you had the same problem of not being listened to or believed.

since coming to AS, i've found that i want to trigger myself more and more until i stop triggering. for me it is an issue of finally getting things more under control then they have been my whole life. i just want to go through life untriggered and normal.

to me, it sounds like the fact that you have not been believed/heard before means there is still a part of you that needs/craves validation for what you have been through. i have found that inner child work has been very helpful in this department.

as i understand it, often parts of us get "stuck" when abuse happens. to unstick ourselves, we have to allow ourselves to regress back to those ages/times and work through the issues that are holding us back.

i don't know if this would be helpful or not in your situation, but it could be worth a try.

OMG I am so glad this here. I felt like such a freak for this.I think for me I do it because I have such doubts. I rationalize what I went through and try to excuse him a lot. Triggering put myself right back there and I am reassured.

Hey hun, I see a lot of people have already told you that you are not alone in doing this, but I thought I would tell you again. I seek out triggers as well. I feel the need to talk about it and talk about it some more (only to safe people though). I think it is just a way of dealing. Of trying to understand what happened. Like if we trigger ourselves enough or talk about it enough maybe we will understand why they did what they did to us. Just know it is normal, and if you feel it nessecary, and it is not hurting you, keep doing what you are doing. But. even though sometimes it hurts, I still trigger myself on purpose.

i watch suv criminal minds wire in the blood etc also, read torey haydens and similar books etc, horror films, books about serial killers, heaps and heaps of research on csa.

partly because these things are my normal, and too me doing these things is a normalising behaviour. when my adhd gets out of control, and the dissociation kicks in and ptsd is uncopable with the things that bring me back down, that settle me, that balance me and ground me are these triggery things.

i have spent most of my life only remembering parts of memories. the reality of my abuse is in a way permenantly hidden, imersing myself in these things is like facing my reality in a way my brain will allow me too safely. these are my truth, and sadly i feel more like myself when triggered by these things.

i think also, part of it for me is i hate blindness terribley. i am so enraged at the blindness that surronds csa (especially the utter lack of recognition of ra and mdsa, both of which i went through) i am so so so angry that the blindness of the world allowed my abusers to steel my life and ruin me, hide so much of my life in shame and darkness, that i utterly refuse to be yet another ignorant person. so compulsively i read and learn all i can. i duno what good it actually does me, but i feel driven because i dont want the shame of being another blind person looking the other way because its easier, because they can not bear the reality. i wanna make them see too, i wanna smash heads of walls until people open their eyes, but i feel so small and powerless and insignificant in comparrison to this wave of not seeing that all i feel i can do is maintain my own hyper awareness.

I finally decided to come here to ask this question because there are so many people here somebody has to understand.

I'm PTSD. I'm hypervigilant and have flashbacks. But I don't avoid reminders I seek them hard, in art in news places people...

I kept coming back over and over to the place I was molested. I look at pictures of myself at that age and look in vain for pictures of the babysitter who abused me. I stay up all night reading about kids getting hurt. I can't stop talking about it; I'm never done. Its like the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

I guess I feel the world doesn't believe me or thinks it doesn't matter. Not even really the people, just the world the audience, God or something. God thinks I'm a whiner and should get over it. So I can never let myself forget or like it won't even be true anymore and I'll just be broken for no reason.

How do I make God listen. How do I make my dad listen? How do I give up on making my dad listen? When will I feel done? When is this going to stop being the most topical thing in the world, the most important thing to be thinking about no matter what?

Does anyone else here feel like this?

I used to drive 10 minutes out of my way to avoid the woods where I was raped. I did a lot of things to avoid triggers for many years. Now, I too search for them. It's a way to unblock memories that I've buried and need to confront in order to heal. I call it "facing the demons". To me its a way of getting some control. I say when and where the triggers will bring everything back instead of living in fear of them and avoiding everything.

I don't think you're trying to make yourself not forget. I'm sure in your heart you know you will never forget, none of us will. I think you're trying to understand everything in order to deal with it and it's not weird or wrong. I was also not believed the first time I told someone so I understand how you feel. I sometimes think that it caused almost as much damage as the rape itself did. There are many people that would rather choose to not believe you or pretend that it doesn't matter than face reality and realize that these things do happen and they do matter. You are stronger than them and they wouldn't have been able to help you anyways, so you just have to keep talking until you find the right people to listen.

God does not think you're a whiner and that you should get over it. I think He is sickened by the things that people do and by what was done to you. I also think he is amazed and proud of survivors like you, me and so many people here on AS that are working to overcome the trauma and refuse to give up.